How Elizabeth Ajao discovered her area of interest in fintech

After graduating in March 2020 from Obafemi Awolowo College in Osun State, southwestern Nigeria, with a Botany diploma, Elizabeth Ajao appeared set for a profession in finance. She had spent years planning to pivot from self-discipline, just for the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic to rewrite her plans.

“I knew I wasn’t going to do something with Botany, so I had been getting ready myself since 300 stage for a finance profession after college was completed,” Ajao says. “I had secured an internship within the company finance division of Sterling Financial institution earlier than leaving college. However the pandemic occurred, lockdown began, and I couldn’t resume the function.”

Ajao appeared for options for weeks. She landed a product operations internship at SmartTeller, a digital banking platform-as-a-service firm.

“That was my first entry into tech, although I didn’t realise it then,” she recollects.

The journalism interlude

After six months at SmartTeller, Ajao transitioned to tech journalism. 

“On the time, I simply needed to generate profits as a result of I used to be out of a job. And I discovered the writing-related function at Weetracker,” she recollects.

The revenue helped, however writing wasn’t an unfamiliar territory; Ajao had at all times loved it. 

In 2019, whereas in her third yr on the college, she had written for the Botany division’s publication, the Division of Botany Board. Earlier than the tip of her fourth yr, she had began enhancing for the publication.

Becoming a member of WeeTracker, a Pan-African analysis and media firm, through the top of the pandemic in October 2020, she started documenting the African tech ecosystem she supposed to construct inside. 

“I used to be targeted on overlaying rising tales in African tech. It was short-lived (three months), however I informed plenty of tales, about 30 on the time,” Ajao says.

At WeeTracker, she wrote about startups, innovation, and the financial system in Africa, notably enterprise funding in Francophone Africa,  Kenya’s SportPesa, and the tip of cheque utilization in South Africa.

She credit that interval with shaping her understanding of the broader African startup ecosystem.

“[Tech journalism] uncovered me extra to the tech business. You get to know extra firms, extra startups, by default,” Ajao says. 

Finally, writing concerning the business wasn’t sufficient; she needed to be inside it.

Nevertheless, the trail ahead wasn’t instantly clear. “I really thought of product administration, however I wasn’t positive tips on how to get in,” she recollects.

Ajao ultimately received a product administration internship in 2021 at VFD Microfinance Financial institution Restricted (VBank), a Lagos-based monetary providers establishment, doing product operations. It was a interval she remembers for the depth of the work.

“I took the internship as a result of I needed to get publicity, expertise, and I needed to additionally show myself,” she recollects.

In late 2021, she left VBank for  Enyata, a software program improvement company that builds digital merchandise for companions throughout a number of industries, the place she spent over two years as a undertaking supervisor. She labored with shoppers together with Mdaas World, an African health-tech firm, and Prestmit, a digital asset market, serving to them transfer “their concepts into workable options.”

It was at Enyata that she realised her area of interest was not simply tech, however particularly finance. 

“I realised that once I was constructing FinTech merchandise, there was this stage of pleasure that got here [with building them]. So once I needed to area of interest, it was a no brainer for me to go to a FinTech firm. It simply got here naturally to me,” Ajao recollects.

Builders in Fintech

The pure affinity for monetary methods led Ajao again to the banking sector, however she job-hunted for seven months: “I had a very exhausting time going again totally into fintech after my internship and function at Enyata. A simple manner in for me was working in a financial institution.”

In 2023, she secured a task in 2023 as Product Supervisor, Funds, within the tech group at Polaris Financial institution, a Nigerian business financial institution. 

“I oversaw funds for the VULTe 3.0 app, the digital banking arm of Polaris Financial institution. My function concerned making funds on the app dependable,” Ajao says.

Throughout her first 9 months on the job, she found a void out there: there was no central repository for the localised information required to construct monetary merchandise in Africa.

“For fintech, particularly if you’re constructing inside the African context, the information that you must construct is definitely not very on the market,” Ajao says, “I discovered myself struggling so much within the early phases. Everyone was simply winging it. You’ll be able to go on ChatGPT and Google, however you don’t get as a lot localised information as you’d proper from speaking to somebody who is definitely constructing.”

That wrestle led to the start of Builders in Fintech, a community-driven platform co-founded along with her colleague, Betty Bada. Launched in June 2025, the platform serves as an open-source hub for these navigating the complexities of the business. 

Ajao says Builders in Fintech has a neighborhood of roughly 3,000 fintech professionals throughout social media and the web site, with a readership of over 10,000 since inception. The platform has a fintech glossary characteristic that explains technical phrases and processes within the fintech business. 

Builders in Fintech is designed to be participatory. Ajao says that she and her co-founder shouldn’t have all of the solutions. The web site permits customers to submit phrases or sources, that are then reviewed by a back-end group earlier than going stay. 

“We wish the web site to be a spot the place, in the event you’re constructing within the fintech business in Africa and also you go to the web site, you discover one thing,” she says.

The undertaking is at present supported by a volunteer core group of six, together with designers and authorized consultants. Whereas at present working as a non-profit, Ajao has a transparent eye on sustainability. Plans for a month-to-month e-newsletter, sponsorships, and spotlighting area of interest fintech firms are within the works to maintain the operations afloat. 

“Within the subsequent three to 5 years, I need it to be the go-to platform at any time when individuals want readability about fintech,” Ajao says. 

Whereas the present focus is closely Nigerian, she plans to scale the initiative’s influence throughout the broader African continent.

‘Uniquely human’

Ajao isn’t anxious about synthetic intelligence (AI), however she is clear-eyed about what it means for her occupation.

The product supervisor’s worth has rested on the heavy lifting of documentation: writing the Product Necessities Doc (PRD), a foundational doc defining the aim, options, performance, and behavior of a product. A product supervisor additionally paperwork person tales and exhaustive roadmap documentation, a visible abstract that maps out the imaginative and prescient and path of a product providing. 

However as generative AI begins to automate these purposeful duties, the product administration market is seeing a brutal shift the place the barrier to entry for constructing has dropped sharply because of this. For operators like Ajao, the query is not tips on how to construct, however how their function stays related within the AI age.

“Once I first began in product, I may spend weeks writing documentation or structuring product necessities. As we speak, with AI instruments, a big a part of that course of will be accelerated dramatically,” she says.  

To remain forward of this curve, Ajao is doubling down on downside framing and strategic execution. AI instruments permit her to deal with the grit required to maneuver a product from an idea to a purposeful actuality.

“The [AI] instruments might change how shortly we work, however they don’t exchange judgment, context, or the power to make the suitable selections about what needs to be constructed and why.”

For Ajao, the way forward for tech isn’t about competing with machines, however about leaning into what she calls the “uniquely human” elements of the job: pondering clearly, downside framing, and execution.

“Execution has at all times been my strongest muscle. I consider staying wonderful at that can preserve me related for a few years to return,” she says.

Outdoors of labor, Ajao is pursuing a grasp’s diploma in Innovation and Info Expertise Administration on the College of Salford in the UK, whereas serving because the Product Supervisor, Funds, at Quidax, a Nigerian cryptocurrency startup.

When she wants to modify off, the choices are dependable: a “cringey” Nollywood film or a Okay-drama.

“They’re so enjoyable for me,” she says. “Alternatively, any exercise that includes being with my associates—I’m in. I simply love their firm.”